Climbing Kilimanjaro: What does it take to summit the highest mountain in Africa?

I’m discussing mid-life crisis over coffee with a friend. We both feel we have peaked in our respective careers, we reached a top, but we don’t like the people we have to share the view with.

“How about we climb a real summit?” my friend suggests. We agree on climbing the Kilimanjaro.

It is a place of superlatives: the highest mountain in Africa is also one of the world’s largest volcanoes and the highest free-standing mountain in the world.

We come prepared: we trained, gathered meticulously the necessary equipment over weeks, took the first pill of many to prevent high altitude sickness. The irony is that the side-effects of these pills often cause the same symptoms as the sickness itself, and we haven’t been able to start taking them days in advance as you’re supposed to, because they’re in my luggage — which is still in Nairobi, because the airline lost it on the way. That is, I learn, quite a common occurrence, as is the luggage not making it on time for the hike (or at all).

I’m able to rent equipment, but it puts a damper on the experience. As we start our ascent through the rain forest, I feel like I’m caught in a caravan of mostly white hikers and our African guides. Ant-like, we work our way up, in a neat single file. Every now and then, we are told to not walk too fast. “Pole! Pole!” are the first words we learn in the local language: slowly, slowly, to let the body adjust.

The only ones stepping out of line are the porters who’ve done this trip many, many times. Some carry personal, portable toilets that can be booked for an additional $100 (Dh367). The guides tell us stories about the first man to summit Kilimanjaro, Hans Meyer, at the time when Tanzania was a German colony. When Meyer reached the top, he held a German flag in one hand, and a rock in the other; the actions of a white colonist who walked the pass that Kinyala Lauwo, who was truly the first man to climb Kilimanjaro, had made for Meyer.

I wonder what it must have felt like to tame this beast of a volcano, to create a path where there had been none, cutting bushes and trees in his way, the polar opposite of the well-trodden path that I’m sharing now with hundreds of others. I envy Lauwo, the sense of exploration he must have felt — in today’s world this is almost impossible to find.

Instead of my explorer’s spirit blossoming, I develop an incessant headache — a side-effect of the meds. When we arrive at 2,835 metres altitude and our camp for the night, it’s freezing. I become increasingly doubtful I will be dressed warm enough for summit day. Our guides enter the tent in the evening to measure our oxygen levels — this is getting serious, I think.

After walking for a couple of days through a dense, disorienting blanket of clouds, another of the five climate zones on the hike, the Heather-Moorland zone spits us out into sunshine again.

When we arrive at 3,750 meters, my head is exploding. My stomach refuses to keep anything inside, including water. If someone offered me a seat in their helicopter for a ride down, I would take it in a heart beat.

As I snuggle with my-drinking-bottle-turned-hot-water-bottle in the tent at night, I cry tears that threaten to freeze immediately on my face.

On summit day, we start 23 minutes past midnight, from the basecamp at 4,700 metres. We pass a warning sign to not risk our lives and return immediately in case of high altitude sickness. I’m wearing seven layers of clothing as we join, yet again, a line of other hikers zigzagging their way up. With the headlamps, it looks like a pilgrimage of worshippers with candles.

The light of my headlamp briefly illuminates the face of another hiker who has paused on the way — he’s ghostly pale, with a deep blue tint around his mouth and under his eyes — a clear sign of altitude sickness, we learned — but he pushes on with the help of his friends. The guides are singing, but fail to mask the sounds of people throwing up to the left and right of us.

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